Harley Benton SC450 Review and Upgrade

A cheap Korean Harley Benton SC450 vintage guitar. Bought to
upgrade. But was this guitar really any good? And how to upgrade it
to a better guitar? Check this
review to find out.

Harley Benton SC-450 Review and Upgrade

You know how these things are, all of a sudden the market is
flooded with very low cost Far Eastern guitars - some legal and some
counterfeit. They always look very tempting to buy, after all the
cost is so low for westerners its hardly a few Starbucks right? But
can we really expect to get something really good for very little
money?

So that line of thought got me thinking about going to buy a
SC450 and 'updating' it to be the best guitar that it could be.
Anyone not familiar with the SC-450... well it looks rather familiar
in shape and composition. Far be it for me to call it a 'Les Paul',
but I suspect that from 20 feet on a stage you certainly could. So
maybe it might stand the test of being pretty much the same as a
'Les Paul' type even using some Gibson parts. They all look as if
they fit from the images on sellers sites.

What a great idea... buy the guitar for £125 ($170) and upgrade
it with a maximum budget of say £450-£500 ($500-$750) and maybe I
would have a 'Les Paul' for that low budget. So I located a guitar
at Thomann and had to wait if I ordered one (they said) because it
had 'sold out'.

The specifications looked pretty good... Wilkinson pickups,
vintage style tuners, bound body, mahogany body, but most of all a
AAA maple top. Now that aspect puzzled me a little. You see, AAA
grade maple costs money and the image I saw on the site looked like
very nicely flamed maple. And Thomann offered the guitar with their
'famous' three year warranty. What did I have to lose! Thomann I
have bought off historically a lot of equipment and had only ever
sent back just one set of headphones because they were 'dirty'.
Thomann also said that the guitar would come 'set up and checked'
which for the money I wondered how they could do it all. So I
ordered one.

So while I waited for the guitar I compiled a list of things I
just wanted to upgrade so I knew there would be absolutely no issues
- and that I could show guys how to do those upgrades themselves.

Here it is:

Gibson Stop/Tail Piece

Gibson Bridge

Bare Knuckle Pickups ('The Mule')

Replacement quality pots throughout

Replacement quality capacitors

Replacement wiring throughout

Replacement toggle switch to 'Switch craft'

Replacement 'Tusq' nut

I decided that the tuners might be OK so did not buy those at the
time. I did not want to go over budget because the idea was to not
cut corners but to fit the best parts I could at a reasonable price.
The most expensive part were the pickups followed by the bridge then
the stop/tailpiece... but I had the Gibson parts already. However, I
included the costs in my budget available.

The guitar arrived a week or so later after they said it would
ship and removing it from its box it looked great so I did not spend
long on it, but went to play it in the studio outside. Tuning was
rather difficult as the guitar drifted a little. It must be those
new strings. After playing the guitar for a good thirty minutes and
after stretching the strings extensively there was no way the guitar
would stay in tune. Also the tone was a very thin sounding not so
nice sound. It tried a few different amps but it remained about the
same throughout. I filmed the guitar for my records and then gave
up.

Bridge

So I decided to carry out the upgrades to the guitar and assumed
that the parts were the problem. They were partly to blame, but
there was a really bad issue with this guitar as supplied that to be
honest I could not believe I was seeing as I stripped off the old
parts.

Click for larger view

Above is what I found as soon as I removed the bridge. The bridge
mounting holes had at least a 3-5mm hole wider than it should have
been. The best way to see this is on the video at the bottom of the
page. In fact the bridge mounts not only slid in and out they
literally dropped in and swayed back and forth. I had found the
reason for the detuning! This problem now caused me to be in a
dilemma.

Should I rebuild this and return it to Thomann or not? Thomann
would exchange it or refund me but likely I would be paying the
shipping back to them? or not...

In any case I decided that because I bought this guitar to
upgrade it made little difference if I had to do a fix on the guitar
at the same time so faffing about with returns did not matter in my
case... but would it matter if you had bought this guitar? It also
concerned me greatly because Thomann included a document (duly
signed) showing that the guitar had been 'set up and checked' by
their service team. Really! Either their service team were drunk at
the time or they did not do the 'set up and check'. So I had
immediately lost faith in their 'service team' right there and
then.

OK so I considered how to fix the guitar. I located some dowel
wood from a store called 'B&Q' in the UK (a home improvement store)
and made two plugs so that I could fill the holes. I made them fit
snugly and wood glued them in place then waited a day. Later I
re-drilled the holes smaller to accept a genuine Gibson bridge which
fitted very tightly and resolved the problem of the bridge that was
as shown in the above image.

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While I was at it, I also re-drilled the stop/tailpiece holes to
take Gibson mounts (12mm give or take... be careful) and fitted that
too. As you see from the above image the bridge components were
fitted and the stop/tailpiece parts were ready to go.

Click for larger view

While I'm no luthier and I did manage to slightly dent the top of
the guitar through tapping too far one of the dowels... so be
careful if you upgrade your guitar. The fact is
that this was a massive improvement over what appeared when I took
the guitar out of the box originally and brand new. I really did not care
much about
aesthetics at this time, I just wanted to get the thing fully
operational rather than throwing it in the rubbish bin. As you can
see from that photo the repair and upgrade were all cool.

Electrics

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Hmmm it seems like the electrics were of the 'budget' type...
(and I don't use that word lightly) - small pots of no brand, wiring from the toggle switch basically a
piece of telephone cable (think of the interference potential) and
really cheap capacitors. At least the Wilkinson pickups looked like they
had reasonably good cotton shielded cable with a metal braided
screen. Good. But I was removing it all anyway to upgrade the lot.
The guitar was a cheap guitar and I guess the wiring is like this
throughout the guitars they sell. Improvement is just around the
corner.

Next up was the toggle switch... I had decided to upgrade that
from the start as they are often not good quality even on more
pricier guitars. I bought a switch that the seller called 'original'
Gibson on eBay. Let's cut the crap... it was another copy switch
that had its poles in the wrong places and not a 'Switch craft' at
all. Take note of this or you might well buy one of these that is a
pain to make work. You can, but its far harder to do. Here's a shot
of the so called 'new one' from eBay. Note the soldering on this was
only for testing at that time.

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Make sure that when you buy one of these that it says 'Switch
craft' stamped along it or you might get one of the above. It seems
Switch craft have now made a shorter toggle switch as shown below
which I later fitted. It was perfect and importantly, it stuck out
of the front of the guitar exactly the right amount. The original
was longer and so was the eBay one shown above. Get a switch craft!

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My wiring overall was completed easily enough. Once I had the
better switch later it was nigh on perfect. Just be sure that when
you change out the stop/tailpiece or bridge mountings that you run a
grounding wire from one of them in to the wiring cavity - it stops
hum from external sources and acts as a 'least resistance' path for
electricity if you ever touch a live microphone. There was one there
originally fitted by the Harley Benton boys and I was happy to see
that had been done on the original wiring.

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Body

This picture is slightly blurry and there were a few more things
to do before it was complete (ground the third leg on the pots for
example, but you can see the larger pots, the wires from the toggle
switch and the pickup wires - also that all important wire coming
from the cavity connecting to the bridge. A big improvement. I did
not use copper tape in these areas because I often find it makes
very little difference to Les Paul type guitars.

Click for larger view

Notice the wood in the bottom of this cavity... it is supposed to
be 'AAA maple' flamed as shown on the top of this guitar. In reality
the wood grain goes across the body in a completely different way
than the 'wood' on the 'maple' top. While it is possible it could be
a form of maple... it is NOT from under here 'AAA maple' and never
has been. Hmmm. Lets take a look at the top and that 'AAA maple'.
Also notice that the cutout on the right of this picture did not
allow the pot to face the way it would on similar guitars because
the cutout is wrongly machined to do that - or the tone pot is
drilled in the wrong place... make up your own mind.

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I have a suspicion that this 'AAA maple' top is really a photo
flame (or lithograph wrap). However, it is possible that the
top could be veneer - although I have to say that if it is then it
is so thin that veneer could go on a sandwich :). I reckon it might
well be 1mm if it is veneer. One thing is for
sure though, the top of this guitar below the surface is not figured
in any way. Examine the above image and you will see that below the
top in the cavity that the wood grain (what ever it is) goes the
opposite way to the figuring on the 'top' of the body. Make no
mistake this 'AAA maple' top is at best some of the thinnest veneer
I have ever seen and at worst a lithograph. I have seen images on
the internet that suggest the latter. Let's give this guitar the
'benefit of the doubt' about the parentage of the 'AAA maple' top
shall we? But this:

seemed a little confusing to me and might well be confusing to
others. I'm used to seeing a proper maple top of figuring and not
what I got here. Basically you take your money and you make your
choice.

After fitting the pickups in to the rings (which indeed were
exactly the right sized rings for the Bare Knuckle Pickups - which
in turn are the exact Gibson size too) I fitted them to the body and
they were a nice fit with one exception. The routing for the pickups
was not deep enough (slightly too shallow) for the pickup screws
that fit through the pickups. I had to cut them down.

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The wood on the body is (it seems) specified as mahogany. Close
inspection of this wood where the guitar output cover fits shows its
been drilled at high speed in my opinion. That's no real problem of
course, but the finish is really course and not at all what I might
have expected for mahogany. Still, I guess it could likely be mahogany but
not as I have ever seen it. Maybe its a variety of mahogany that I
have not come across which is quite possible as there are many
types. I just wonder if this mahogany has the right make up to be
light enough and resonant enough for a guitar. It might - or not?
There is no way of knowing unless we identified the exact variance
of mahogany used. Well at least it is mahogany right?

And here is a shot of the guitar after the electrics are
finished.

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Notice in the above image that the bridge has no 'grooves for the
strings. On a Gibson bridge you have to make them yourself. I bought
a 'cheap' set of files to do exactly that with the bridge being
careful to place the grooves in the right place and of the right
size.

The original bridge as supplied had massive V grooves in it which
I was not at all happy with. It also had the 6th string saddle just
floating around because the mechanism to stop that was failed from
new. There is zero comparison between the supplied bridge and the
Gibson one - but even the lower cost bridges were better if not by
much.

Click for larger view

Regarding the rest of the guitar as supplied I found the
following things to be acceptable without any work whatsoever:

The frets were of an acceptable standard and were flat -
completely useable

The binding (including on the neck was all good and better
than you might expect for the money

The truss rod worked

The nut was acceptable and cut properly

The neck was 'set' in to the body correctly by angle -
something I could have never been able to fix had it been wrong

The tuners were reasonable (but I did later change them out
anyway)

Here's the guitar with strings completed.

Click for larger view

This Harley Benton SC-450 is now in a place it has never been
before. And if you have a Harley Benton guitar you could actually
improve it for a lot less than the costs that I spent. There are
cheaper parts and pickups available for sure which would enhance
this guitar further than when you receive it from new of that there
is no doubt. But I have never seen ANYONE actually fit genuine
Gibson parts to this (or any other) type of very low cost guitar
before and I did wonder whether it would make that much difference.
In reality I had bought another 'Wilkinson' roller bridge but you
know what it was not that much improved to make me fit it as the
change for better things.

Tuners

The tuners were left on this guitar as supplied for a while. For
the most part they are adequate and do work - no problems there. But
because I had upgraded the hell out of this guitar I bought a second
hand set of Gibson tuners and fitted those. To do that you need to
'open up' the holes on the back of the headstock a little because
the Gibson tuners are a screwed in front section that is
accommodated
on the tuner itself. Here are the photos of the originals and the
updated 'Gibson' tuners.

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And below are a set of tuners second user from a Gibson guitar
that I picked up cheaply from eBay.

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Notice that the holes for the new tuners were stepped and had
been drilled out by me to accomodate the Gibson ones. I used the
original screws from the old tuners to fit the new tuners and by the
way the screw holes needed no drilling they fitted exactly the same
as on a Gibson Les Paul.

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And the finished headstock:

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Checking the Gibson tuners against the original Harley Benton
units its pretty plain to see why Gibson tuners cost more. The HB
ones are pressed steel and the Gibson ones are cast. The front of
the headstock is shown so you can see how the overall view of the
headstock is different than stock.

I do think that if you fit the best components that you can lay
your hands on (even one at a time) then the result will actually be
a bigger improvement overall to the final results too - remember I
said it here.

It was never really my intention on this upgrade review (or indeed the
video upgrade review) to 'knock' this Harley Benton guitar. It has been very
frustrating that I received this instrument in the way it was sent
to me and not having the 'set up and check' that Thomann
specifically stated and promised had been done ended up where I got this guitar and that is a
pity.

I may be right or may be wrong on the photo flame - it just might
be veneer, but either of those two solutions are not what I
understood to be an 'AAA maple top'. Most people that know a little
about guitars know that description from either the likes of PRS or
Gibson or some other quality brand and it is associated with at
least 13mm maple tops... not a 1mm maple top.

Having said all of that I bought this guitar to use as a vehicle
to demonstrate how to upgrade it from some of the components that in
my opinion are not that great - what did I expect for the money? Well I expected a
solid guitar from the off that had been checked so I could simply
and easily upgrade this guitar. There's no doubt it IS a cheap
guitar and while it looks great over the internet or on video in
reality there are basic issues on the one I received that clearly
should have been resolved before they shipped the guitar... actually
this one should have never even left the factory. Nobody cares...
because if they did it would have never made it to me - actions do
speak louder than words.

But thankfully I DID overcome these problems on this guitar and
it is an incredibly better and more focused guitar for it. If you are someone who
can't really afford more than say something like a PRS SE or
Epiphone (in this style maybe) then taking a Harley Benton and
upgrading it might be an option for you especially if you are good
with your hands like I tend to be. The finished instrument will
stand up against other brands AFTER these upgrades and for a
reasonable price too. For me, the guitar before the upgrades was not
a viable purchase in any way.

Always remember one thing... you are not going to improve the
woods as supplied on this guitar... they are as supplied and will always be
those woods no matter what. And there lies the choice... are you OK
with a basic carcass of a guitar or do you want something better to
improve. And the frets or neck angle and setting will remain as will
that truss rod. Its your choice.

Conclusions

While this guitar served its purpose of showing the upgrades for
others I was not at all happy with the product when it arrived as it
did. I don't care, I upgraded it, but others may not be able to do
that and if they receive anything remotely like the guitar I guess you
will be sending it back.

So the score for the manufacturer on this guitar before the
upgrades is ZERO! It should never have been sold. The score to Thomann for that non setup is also a ZERO because it
was clearly never carried out. But they DID sign the declaration
that it had been. No one could miss the problems on this guitar had
they fitted the strings (that they also said was part of the set up
and check) the bridge would have fallen off. However, after
carrying out the upgrades and fixing the issues with this Harley
Benton I would rate it at about a SEVEN.

Its not all bad news. Of course I had to spend more money to
make it all good and anyone who bought this particular guitar could
have 'sent it back' or could do what I did. It all comes down to
what is acceptable to you if you buy one. One thing is for sure, if
I was not using this guitar to upgrade it would have been
immediately returned with a letter indicating the position about
that 'set up and check' to the seller and I would have insisted on
that they collected it at their expense. I would have insisted on a
full refund including all shipping on this guitar and never would
have bought another one. Maybe I might not have bought anything from
Thomann in the future - the fact is these days, if you live in the
UK, there are cheaper places to buy right here in the UK. Thomann
nil, other one. It's a sort of 'own goal' from Thomann on this sale
to me. They should know better.

Some people buy these Harley Benton guitars and tell everyone on
the internet that they
are 'perfect'. That might well be the case for their guitar and I
don't suggest for one moment that all Harley Benton guitars are as
bad as this one was sold and presented to me. But I have no way of
knowing the returns rate and neither does anyone else except Thomann
- and they are not telling. What I do question
though, is that (for example) the bridge as fitted to this guitar
was the 'standard' bridge supplied on at least this model, that the pots
were again the 'standard' pots as supplied on at least this model, that the 'Wilkinson'
pickups (if they really were that brand) are the 'standard' as
supplied on this model. So why only this guitar with all these
issues and all the others were 'perfect'? I think that comes down to
what is acceptable to the buyer and user and whether they are always
'telling the truth' in the same way that I do. For me, I was and remain
far more used to having a guitar that when I buy it new that every aspect
of that guitar is thoroughly operational in a very good way. Clearly
my 'standards' are not those of some other guys.

Would I buy another Harley Benton guitar just to play without
modifications? Unfortunately not - this guitar experience has gone some way in
confirming that no matter what anyone says 'you always get what you
pay for'. I also want to confirm however, that I would never buy a
counterfeit Gibson guitar or indeed any of the bottom end 'kits' for
guitars on the market today from varying Far Eastern manufacturers
because in the main once again - it is pretty obvious what you will
probably get. But you might be 'lucky'. If I wanted to gamble I
might have better odds on the British premium bonds. Remember when
you gamble no one promises you will win.

This project seemed like a good idea at the time, simply buy a
very low cost carcass, throw away the cheaper bits, upgrade the
'important' bits and hey presto a great guitar for not a lot of
money. I'm happy with the result, but if I could choose a different
route by maybe selecting a PRS SE or maybe some other higher quality
guitar as that carcass to upgrade then I would take that route in retrospect.
Less Hassle, better quality but it does cost more.

I hope that this upgrade path as shown if you have a Harley Benton guitar
and this review (if you don't) are useful to you. This review and upgrade path is now
complete.

Here's the video upgrade and review of the Harley Benton SC-450
Vintage with the Lemon Drop finish.